A Cowbell For Obama

Barack Obama will appear on Tim Russert’s Meet The Press on November 11, 2007. Will Tim Russert treat Obama with the same contempt he displayed towards Hillary during Tuesday’s debate and in previous encounters?

We will post more questions we doubt Tim Russert will ask Obama as November 11 approaches.

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Forlorn cows wander off in the dead of night. Farmers attach bells around the poor creatures’ ample necks in an attempt to keep track of them as they clang in the dark.

It is time to get a cowbell for Obama. He keeps on disappearing.

Obama’s latest disappearance is again on an issue he makes flowery claims to care deeply about — Iran.

Jim Webb of Virginia a staunch anti-Iraq war, anti-Iran war Senator yesterday sent a letter addressed to Bush which 30 senators co-signed.

Along with 29 co-signers, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia sent a letter to the White House today warning the President not to take offensive military action against Iran without the express consent of Congress. Designed to clarify any ambiguity as a result of a recent Senate amendment urging designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the Senators also expressed concern that the administration’s increasingly provocative rhetoric has undermined diplomatic efforts with Iran.

We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran. This includes the Senate vote on September 26, 2007 on an amendment to the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act [the Kyl/Lieberman non-binding resolution]. This amendment, expressing the sense of the Senate on Iran, and the recent designation of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, should in no way be interpreted as a predicate for the use of military force in Iran.

Barack Obama has refused to sign the Jim Webb letter to Bush. With this refusal to sign onto the Webb letter Obama tops himself again as an exemplar of hypocrisy.

Obama, who in flowery language claims he will work with Ripublicans, apparently cannot rouse himself to work with Democrats.

Obama piles hypocrisy on top of ugly hypocrisy. Obama refused to sign the Webb letter and states his hypocritical reasons:

“Senator Obama admires Senator Webb and his sincere and tireless efforts on this issue. But it will take more than a letter to prevent this administration from using the language contained within the Kyl-Lieberman resolution to justify military action in Iran. This requires a legislative answer and Senator Obama intends to propose one.” – Bill Burton, Obama spokesperson

Democrat Barack Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country’s nuclear ambitions.

Clinton’s campaign accused Obama of playing politics instead of taking a leadership role from the outset. [snip]

The letter accuses Bush of “provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran.”

“We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran,” it says. That includes the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, the letter says.

Obama missed the vote on the amendment because he was campaigning. Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said if Obama was so concerned about the amendment, he should have been there to vote against it. Singer said Obama also should have signed Webb’s letter and co-sponsored two other pieces of legislation that reaffirm the president cannot use force against Iran without congressional approval.

“It’s unfortunate that (Senator) Obama is abandoning the politics of hope in favor of the kind of political games he is so critical of in his book,” Singer said. He pointed to a passage in “The Audacity of Hope” where Obama is critical of the tendency to “exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case.”

But curiously absent from the vote was Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, also a Democratic candidate for president, who had canceled a campaign appearance in South Carolina so he could be in Washington for votes.

At the time of the Move-on vote, Obama was mocked for refusing to vote on the Move-on resolution because Obama had minutes earlier voted for a resolution authored by Senator Boxer.

Does Obama pick and choose which “stunts” he will support? Obama won’t deign to vote on a “stunt” resolution regarding Move-on. But Obama will propose a “stunt” resolution which Obama himself authors. We’re frankly confused. We’ve never encountered a pick and choose Senator before. This politics of absence and stunts must be Obama’s “new politics” – that and gay bashing tours and sliming a fellow Democratic candidate for president.

Obama, instead of working with fellow Democratic senators, has decided to showboat. Obama made no effort whatsoever to help draft the Kyl/Lieberman non-binding resolution. Afterwards Obama complained about the passage of the Kyl/Lieberman resolution which he did not deign to vote on.

Now Obama does not sign the Webb letter because it will take more than a letter to prevent this administration from using the language contained within the Kyl-Lieberman resolution. But hasn’t Obama complained that a non-binding resolution is meaningless and is equivalent to writing a letter?

Why not sign the Webb letter in addition to any and ALL resolutions designed to tell Bush he must not attack Iran? Obama is once again (in South Carolina on his gay bashing tour Obama sought to gain support from Democratic voting African-American’s by gay-bashing) playing ugly political games in order to benefit himself politically and hurt Hillary Clinton.

i don’t write often, but read 44 on a daily basis. needless to say, it’s been quite a week. many thanks to all posters, especially admin, for the advice and direction in what is now an all out war on our candidate.

today, senator clinton will officially put her name on the NH ballot. i will be at the state house today, along with hundreds of her supporters, for the rally.

bottom line, we will all benefit from the lessons learned this week and be stronger for it. the tide is turning.

Sadly, I doubt if Tim Russert will ask OBama any of those questions. And I doubt that Russert will hold up a letter written by Tony Rezko and say “Gotcha”……Maybe Tim Russert will instead hold up a sign that says “OBAMA 08”.

I have lost all respect for Tim Russert. HE should truly be ashamed of himself, calling himself a journalist.

Tuesday night’s debate was not Hillary Clinton’s finest moment of the campaign season, but there has been little or no immediate damage to her standing in the national polls. In fact, if anything, support for Clinton has ticked up a bit since she stumbled on an answer to questions about drivers licenses for illegal aliens.

Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that on the two nights following the debate (Wednesday and Thursday) Clinton held a 45% to 18% lead over Barack Obama. For Clinton, that’s an improvement from Monday and Tuesday nights when her lead over Obama had been 40% to 24%.

John Edwards was at 10% on the first two nights and 12% on Wednesday and Thursday. Bill Richardson went from 5% to 7% during the same time frames.

Caution must be used in interpreting these results for several reasons.

First, the sample sizes are very small–447 Likely Primary Voters on the first two nights and 435 on the second two nights. The margin of sampling error for each set of data is +/- 5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. So, Clinton’s gain and Obama’s decline may be nothing more than statistical noise. However, it is fairly safe to conclude that Obama did not immediately gain any ground.

Anyone seen this BS on huffington post about how Obama is saying he doesn’t play his race card and says Hillary is playing the gender card? First of all, the headline on that blog says “Obama On Hillary: I Don’t Say “Look, I’m Being Hit On Because I Look Different”; Okay, he isn’t getting hit on. He gets a free pass by the media, as he will on sunday by Russert. Secondly, everytime I hear him spaek he says, “nobody thought that a black man named barack obama could get elected to the US senate but….”, so again he is playing this hypocrisy game. He is like our version of Dubya, but a little more intelligent.

celiff, Sounds like the Obama people might be seeing the backlash among women we’ve been speculating about. I know the Hillary camp is pushing the pile-on narrative, but I think a lot of the negative response by women was visceral.

I gotta say I have a good feeling where this post debate ‘thing’ is going. Although we all initially feared the worst right after the debate, as others (pundits and bastards as russert) slammed Hill.
I had a good calm feeling before the debate, and after some bumps, I have regained that calm feeling. 🙂

This is very similar to what happened in 2000, in Hillarys debate with Lazio, and with Russert as the moderator. He tried the same shit back then, and it backfired, we all know how that ended, our girl won!

And, to show off my ‘loony’ side, if anyone is interested in numerology, history has shown itself to be repetitive in 7 year cycles. This is 2007, and Edwards was this cycles Lazio, using the same attack theme of phony money which Lazio used in 2000! Russert tried to upset Hillary by bringing up Bills affair in 2000 and this time he tried to get her in a gotcha by bringing up a previous statement from Bill.

It backfired then, and it probably will this time as well. And although some still say she hurt herself with the drivers license thing, the overall impression that people are left with, women AND men, is that she was attacked. And this is the democratic primary, we are supposed to stay together, not do the republicans job for them. This WILL backfire, it must not be tolerated that because you are facing unpopularity, you can expect to gain popularity by attacking others.
It is interesting how impressions change after a few days have passed.
Immediately after the debate in 2000 Lazio went everywhere bragging, thinking he had done a good job, not knowing what lied ahead. 😀

Kostner although that is rassmussen and the daily tracking poll is like a heart rhythm, it’s looking good. And also thanks for those videos you posted in the previous thread, I LOVE them, Hillary was so good, she was warmer then I’d ever seen her, and she was funny too! 🙂 Who’d a thought?! When she is in a comfortable setting, you can tell she visibly relaxes, nice to see.

He DOESN’T play the race card???????????????????????????????
Could’ve fooled me! And you bring up a good example, you don’t have to whine and use it as a negative for it still to be ‘used’! He’s saying he defied the odds by being elected, that’s some race issue in there.
I’m not attacking him for it tho, because it is as Paula says similar to what Hill is doing with the gender thing, by saying “I’m not running because I’m a woman but……”

But she isn’t playing victim here, there are others that are mentioning that she is a woman in this, not herself or the campaign. They are using the gender thing in reverse, claiming she is doing this herself. Which means what you say Paula, they must have gotten some bad numbers their way. 😀 😀

And that video they made was pure brilliance, the Politics of Pile on! Not a woman victim, but a front runner being piled on! a spade is a spade.

This is sneaky politics, their doing again what the media this running up to this debate, saying she is ‘acting’ as if she has won the nomination, she never said this herself, they all claimed she did.
They are doing this now with gender, trying to get people to think twice before coming to her defense, meaning running away from their offending attacks

This Obama as “ME, ME” again….he is a divider; he canot join others in the senate but instead wants yet another iran bill….that is why not much gets done; too many bills/resoultions proposed versus a single bill with many sponsors……

Obama is just like edwards…”my way or the highway”….

That is why webbs amendment has been wating since mar 2007; and in the foreign relations committee (with Biden/dodd/obama/Webb), those 3 candidtes did nothing to this webb bill; they also did not act with grace for the irg terrorist group; they let it wait until kyl/lierberman forced itr on them and reid had to give way to mcconnell allow biden’s iraq partition amendment as a quid pro quo….

Even biden as chair of this committee has been negligent on this iran issue…

Look the republicns are united; the democrats are getting all divided with their own personal agendas!

Edwards drops $800,000 on his first major flight of commercials in a state that all major contenders regard as the most crucial venue for Democratic nomination fight. Iowa has taken on less importance in the more diffuse Republican race.

Obama has spent about $4 million so far, Clinton about $3 million, aides say. As with Edwards, whose theme in new spots is “Heroes” among ordinary Americans, they anticipate remaining on the air through the Jan. 3 caucus.

OMG, Obama isn’t really going there is he? You know, if you want to accuse someone of playing the gender card you have someone else do it for you. At the end of the day, by the way, he’s a man. Hillary is the only woman in the field. I’m sorry of recognition of that offends him.

One goal of Clinton’s additional 100 operatives is to reach older women who like the front-runner but may be distracted from Jan. 3 caucuses by Christmas-season responsibilities. Team Obama faces mirror-image problem: mobilizing sympathetic college students who will be away from campus on holiday break.

“Anybody who tells you they know what the impact is, is making it up,” says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. Among Republicans, Romney’s Iowa chief Gentry Collins argues the holiday-week mood “makes it harder” for rivals to erode his lead with negative ads. Because holiday shoppers will ignore better-funded campaigns’ spots, Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman says, “our biggest asset will be…Santa Claus.”

I am so disgusted by Obama’s new accussation of Clinton playing gender card.

Has Clinton uttered one word regarding being beaten by those male wimps?

This is the worst distortion.

He claims he’s never played race card. This is simply despicable lies.

He was using gay-bashing to woo AA votes in SC… This is the worst race politics he’s played.

He touted he could win GA because AA turnout would explode by 30% if he were the nominee…

Lots of stuff…

Taylor,

I think he is trying to intimidate women voters from supporting Clinton.

This seems to be the new media spin. You need to get on top of this, and uncover Obama’s past of using identity politics in IL race and ramp up his support in SC. Nothing wrong with that, but his hypocricy really gets under my skin.

The gay-bashing angle needs to be hammered again and again. That’s the worst race politics.

He’s trying to intimidate Clinton’s female supporters from speaking out by accusing them of using gender card. This is directed at strong women like you who are outspoken and won’t be intimidated. By doing so, he basically wants to shut folks like you up. This is basically a game of ‘backlash on backlash’…

Second, Obama was notoriously exploiting the race politics, espeically his SC gay-bashing tour, he’s now accusing Clinton of playing victim?

This is just bizarre.

His supporters also gloated on some liberal blogs it’s a smart move by Obama since he’s a minority and he could accuse Clinton of playing gender politics without being questioned by MSM.

I really hope you can get on this. The MSM is ferociously pushing this line since they feel intimidated by the backlash from women voters. They want to intimidate women from speaking out.

Edwards is doing work for the RNC apparently. His ad is similar to one they just put out. Fuck Edwards, I hope he has some scandal that is exposed soon before he does some real damage to Hillary out of spite for losing.

I couldn’t get through the first 3 paragraphs a refreshment of the intent of the Iraq War Res. without screaming foul!

To my knowledge and memory, “lethal force” was only to be used as a LAST RESORT…The language used in Obama’s resolution is “soft” and “nebulous” no where near the definative, straightforward language in the original IWR!

Link here:

graphics8.nytimes.com/images/promos/politics/blog/01obama.pdf

Obama is rewriting the IWR Res using nebulous wording rather than the strong language communicating it’s original intent…

i doubt it’s a tv ad. It’s 1 min and 30 sec long. I haven’t watched it, but I doubt it will have any impact at all. It will only raise the negativity of Edwards… The truth is democratic primary voters like Clinton, if they want to drive up her unfav. #, they actually drive up their own unfav. # even more…

There’s no need to respond at this stage. Just wait next week when Clinton calmly coming out and dismissing these slugfest with a causal chat with journalists.

I liked that phrase: ‘Backlash on backlash’! It’s exactly what it is.
Intimidating women from expressing what they actually feel after watching that debate.

And with the media being so male dominated they’re likely to help Obama with this rhetoric. This is also I believe why we saw the MSM saying Hill lost, and today we have the rasmussen poll, which now is up on Huffpos politics side with the headline, next to Obamas latest whine, Hillary sees jump in poll after Tuesdays debate.
And the MSM guys will be looking quite surprised, considering they had already decided she lost. But they don’t take into consideration that women and most Democrats don’t appreciate these kinds of attacks. Matthews wrote a book on how he loves these kinds of attacks, so of course he’s out of the loop.

“I don’t think they’re piling on because I’m a woman. I think they’re piling on because I’m winning,” Clinton told reporters after filing paperwork to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.
“I anticipate it’s going to get even hotter, and if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I’m very much at home in the kitchen,” she said.

To truly appreciate Clinton’s comments today, you have to realize that she was privately responding to Chris Matthews, particilary with the zinger at the end about being at home in the kitchen.

Yesterday, Mathews offered HIS advice to Clinton at about the “gender card”. From MSNBC:

On Thursday?s ?Hardball,? Chris Matthews, a former speech writer, offered his advice to Sen. Hillary Clinton on what she should say regarding the negative backlash to her performance at NBC?s Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate. His suggested speech is below: “Taking the heat is what leadership is all about. As Harry Truman said, ‘If you don?t like the heat, stay out of the kitchen.’ Taking heat is all part of the process of proving yourself for the world?s most important democratic office. The fact that I am the first woman has nothing to do with the heat on me in this week?s presidential debate. I was the target because, quite simply, I am running well in the national polls. I have gotten nothing but respect from my rivals for the nomination and have no complaints, certainly none to do with our difference in gender. So let?s move on. They?ll be more debates. There?ll be more shots from my opponents. There may even be a few from me at them. But those were the rules we agreed on, not in Philadelphia this week, but in Philadelphia back when we declared Independence. Besides, a little trouble I don?t mind. If I get to be the first woman elected to lead this country I don?t want it said it was because my rivals went soft on me – or I on them.”

Here’s what I predicted about the debates. I have a history at this. I predicted, after meeting Bill Clinton at a party in about 1980 (his first term as governor) that he would soon be the Dem. nominee for president. I was derided because he lost in the next election. I was considered a political genius when he became the nominee.

As for Hillary: While the debate/mugging was raging, I was getting angry calls about the blatant one-sidedness of the event. Although enraged myself, I did say that Americans don’t like unfairness.
There will, I hoped, be many who will take a new look at the characters of Obama and Edwards in a darker, more self-obsessed, petulant, “if I can’t win, I’m taking everyone down with me” sort of way.

Biden went after Giuliani, Hillary went after Bush/Cheney, and Obama and Edwards went after Hillary as the worst possible choice for president.
Their Republican talking points may hurt Hillary in the general election, but I think they belittled themselves in the eyes of many Democrats who want a Dem in the White House.

One more thing — the pundits keep starting out each discussion with “a bad week for Hillary”. This is untruthful. There was a debate which they have decided was bad for her, there was a big union endorsement (in no way bad for her), there was an enthusiastically supported appearance at Wellesley, and the polls showed her increasing her lead.

Eventually, some Democrats are going to ask O and E to stop basing their campaigns on Hillary attacks. In the meantime, they will have been changed from progressive, optimistic Democrats to petulant bully boys.

hwc,
the Hillary response is brilliant on so many levels. Hillary manages to trigger all the many thoughts associated with women and kitchens – positive (nurturing) and negative (domestics) in the same sentence while at the same time reminding everyone of her gender while turning the gender stereotypes upside down and still slamming the negative sense of women and kitchens yet at the same time associating herself with a version of women as professionals yet still nurturing. Its like an Escher lithograph. Just mind bendingly brilliant. A college thesis could be built entirely around that response. Amazing woman.

The thing that Clinton (and Mark Penn) understand is that gender is the overwhelming driving force in this election and, more importantly, that gender is driving the election in symbolic and emotional ways. Mothers and daughters. Fathers and daughters. Husbands and wives. None of this has anything to do with overtly playing or not playing the “gender” card.

The pundits do not understand this. They don’t understand that Clinton saying “I’m at home around the kitchen” is an incredibly effective dog whistle trigger for the emotions and symbolism driving this election.

Kostner, Trippi has not learned a thing from his Dean stewardship and Edwards is foolish to trust Trippi. It is simply a death sentence in a multicandidate field to attack another candidate. It’s politics 101.

Obama and his team are in over their heads in figuring out the angles on how to play with the Edwards attacks on Hillary and their own vanishing profile.

Our sense strategically is that in such a big multi-candidate race the smartest thing to do is to consolidate and fortify your own base. Pat Buchanan on Tucker yesterday said that Edwards and Obama had consolidated their base but at the same time shrunken their base (in other words Edwards and Obama supporters are happy with the attacks on Hillary so they like their respective candidates but the negative attacks mean less people like them).

Hillary on the other hand has had her based consolidated for her and in all likelihood has either expanded her base or gained a hearing from voters more sympathetic to her because of the attacks.

Compare the genius of Hillary’s short sentence which resonates in many ways, some of which we quickly discussed, and – the stumbling, long winded answer that Chris Matthews suggested. Matthews thinks he is smart but he is antiquated. Hillary showed him how it is actually done in short, vibrant, to the point, resonating words.

That was one smart comeback/statement from Hillary, I just keep shaking my head in amazement at how good they are at this.

On another note, when someone here previously mentioned something posted on taylormarsh comment section regarding the LAtimes supposedly sitting on a possibly explosive sex scandal, I along with everyone, I think, thought it was with regards to Edwards.

But what is this crazy stuff about Hillary??? Have people lost their minds? Jokingly, they all say ‘she’ is the disciplined one, so that she would do something like this is just ridiculous. And seriously, this is just ridiculous!

“I’ve been sensing hints that something’s going on, something’s going unspoken in certain insider coverage of the campaign (and by the way this rumor the LA Times is supposedly sitting on is one I never heard in this specific form before. By the way, t’s not the Edwards rumor, it’s something else.”

“Clinton’s advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal matters, said there is a clear and long-planned strategy to fend off attacks by accusing her male rivals of gathering against her.

The idea is to change the subject while making Clinton a sympathetic figure, especially among female voters who often feel outnumbered and bullied on the job.

As one adviser put it, Clinton is not the first presidential candidate to play the “woe-is-me card” but she’s the first major female presidential candidate to do it. ”

What kind of adviser would do this to Hillary? It’s from an ap article.

Yeah I’ve heard that rumor about Richardson, he is supposedly known for having done ‘this’ a few times.
And wasn’t there a sexual harassment case agains him and he apologized?? I’m not sure if my memory serves me right on this one.
Your probably right Kegs, if this was about either of the Clintons, no one would have held back on it.

Nina Totenberg was sounding off today about all this secrecy about prior records in an article at Washpost. Here is my posted response:

I am not impressed with this self righteous demand for records. If I were then I would insist that Senator Obama comply with similar requests for information from newsmen in his own city.

What rankles me more is the blatant partisanship of Matthews and Russert. To them I would say what Army Secretary Welch famously said to Senator McCarthy in the face of similar tirades: “Have you no sense of decency?’